


Bramble House SAVE Point, National Day of Mourning, 202x

by pnictogen_system



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:08:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27729295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pnictogen_system/pseuds/pnictogen_system
Summary: Frisk, Chara, and Asriel of the Pnictogen System reconnoiter briefly, after the emotional events of the night before.
Relationships: Chara & Asriel Dreemurr & Frisk, Chara/Asriel Dreemurr/Frisk
Kudos: 1





	Bramble House SAVE Point, National Day of Mourning, 202x

**Author's Note:**

> 🌐 [Frisk] Well. It would seem that Chara's brief AO3 update on the feast day of St. Catherine of the Wheel was an important event in our short career here on the Surface in 202x. We aren't used to calling upon saints for help...neither of us has particularly happy memories of Christianity, you understand. But Chara is a dedicated Catholic apostate, and they (along with others in our system) are devoted in a sort of abstract nondenominational way to Jeanne d'Arc, especially as she appears in "Fate/Apocrypha". I suppose that dealing with saints was only a matter of time, after that.
> 
> 🌐 In any case...it seems that we have some important part to play in the unfolding of events in the "Undertale" multiverse, for good or ill. We...aren't anyone important. We claim no authority over anyone but our own internal "family", as it were. Our best friend regards us mostly as a joke...with reason, I daresay. 
> 
> 🍀 [Asriel] "Princess" I may be, "Princess" of a "Realm", but I have no illusions. I know that I am less of a princess than the "Emperor Norton" was an Emperor. At least there were other human beings who accepted the Emperor's currency—and no, we are not planning on issuing any.
> 
> 🔴 [Chara] Hey not so fast there Azzy, there's strong arguments to be made—
> 
> 🌐 Chara we are _not_ going into the business of selling the equivalent of indulgences. Please let me finish!
> 
> 🌐 In any case, we need time to decide on a future course. We don't really want to be raining our personal journals down on "Archive of our Own", not without some sort of better framing device anyway, but it gave us a route back in and we're prepared to use it until we're sure of a better plan.

(1:38 pm, 26 November 202x. Bramble House SAVE Point. An unfinished basement room in a single-family home, somewhere in Seattle. CHARA, ASRIEL, and FRISK are stationed in chairs about a small round table. CHARA is looking around.)

CHARA: Is there really room enough for this table _and_ a couch _and_ a table with comfortable room for three? Where are we, anyway? 

FRISK: I've been keeping it deliberately vague, Chara. Do you really want strangers to be furnished with minute details of our physical surroundings? Since the priority was simply to start writing _anything_ , I simply inferred the existence of a generic basement room. There's as much room in here as we want, within reasonable limits. We can work out specifics in due time.

CHARA: At _some_ point we're gonna have to write something **committal.** Just sayin', Frisk.

ASRIEL: Chara, Frisk, let's not bicker unnecessarily? (She takes CHARA's hand in her left paw, FRISK's hand in her right, and gives both humans' hands a gentle squeeze.) I am simply happy to have any place at all where we can feel like a family again. I don't care how vague it is. We're finally all properly together, in some fashion or other. (ASRIEL sighs, dipping her muzzle a bit.) Just how have we all managed it? Have we done something spectacularly _wrong?_ That is my greatest fear. 

CHARA: I don't know. 

FRISK: My position in the matter is practical. Whatever you two trouble you two have managed to get us into 😑 the best thing to do from now on is to handle things as practically and diplomatically as possible. We hardly even know where our place is, in context of the "Undertale" multiverse, or its region of intersection with human affairs—or metaphysical affairs, whatever those might be. Strictly speaking...we don't even know if we "should" be writing _anything_ right now. 

ASRIEL (focuses her gaze on FRISK, stroking her muzzle): You fear that we might exert some undue influence? Disturb some balance?

FRISK: Yes, exactly. Anything we write is going to have an effect on, well, the lore of "Undertale". We might not know much...but I think we know at least how much can be destroyed with a single slip. 

CHARA: Yeah. Fair. I'll try to restrain my impatience.

ASRIEL: What shall we do then? Simply wait for a sign? (She chuckles at this) They do turn up with some frequency. 

FRISK: It seems the correct approach for now. After all, we are going to be eating Chara's pumpkin pie later in the day. That is achievement enough, I think? (At this, FRISK reaches for CHARA's free hand, squeezing it also.) You are our burning star, Chara, we can't deny that. But it is time for other energies than those of fire and spirit. There is so much hard work to be done.

CHARA (eyes tearing up a little): Thanks, Frisk...that means a lot coming from you. (They look around the room, taking in a few details—the collection of owls on one shelf, the pair of Figment plushies in a corner, the figurines of Akemi Homura and Artoria Pendragon on another shelf, accompanied by a brass statuette of an ibis.) We have come a long way in a year and change, haven't we, fam? And somehow it doesn't seem that long ago when I had that moment on a street corner not far from here...I'd just handed over some money for a cheap Jack-In-The-Box burger and was crossing the street afterwards, and suddenly I was taken with this mix of excitement and panic. "Oh my gawd what am I _doing_ here, I'm _from a video game_ , I don't know anything about money or human beings or traffic rules or anything not really, what have I done to [deadname's] life?!" It's so strange to be somehow... **here**...still. Wherever "here" really is. Maybe we just stepped from one sandbox to another, huh? (CHARA laughs their characteristic sardonic laugh, but subsides quickly.) We're gonna have to introduce Flowey into this little party soon, I'm pretty sure.

ASRIEL: Oh dear. My other half. (She slumps a bit in her seat, and looks at her paws, studying the fur over the back of them—black fur, not white.) I'm afraid of what trouble Flowey can make. After all...I was always a little troublemaker, wasn't I, Chara? 

CHARA (squeezing ASRIEL's paw): We both were. But...yeah, I feel like you figured out pretty early on that you could get away with things...especially with **me** around to absorb the blame. (CHARA smiles thinly.) It was what it was. At the time...it felt like all I deserved. 

FRISK: The time for that sort of thinking is past. We are here to mourn our crimes, not to flagellate ourselves for them. Since when did that do anyone any good?

CHARA: Yeah. It is a day of mourning after all. That really is the best way to remember the last Thursday of November, at least in this part of the world. We live on land soaked in the blood of millions of Indigenous victims of colonial depredation. We are effectively living on the proceeds of theft. How do we pay our debts? That is one of our purposes here...to learn that. And many other things.

ASRIEL: I agree, Chara. (She scoots her chair closer to CHARA's, so that she can at last give them a fluffy hug.) Well, I think we've said enough here, haven't we? 

CHARA: Whatever you say, Princess. (They peck ASRIEL a kiss on her snootle.) 

ASRIEL (giggling and returning a kiss to the end of CHARA's nose): We haven't decided yet just how _proper_ this is, you know. 

CHARA (sighing and rolling their eyes in theatrical fashion): Oh, the princess wants to be "proper" does she? Her mom's not proper, I think everyone can kinda tell that about her. And about you, for that matter, Sir Asriel Sexbang.

ASRIEL: That isn't _me_ you know! I'm considerably off-model for an Asriel, it seems, more than usual anyway. Perhaps I'm really very modest.

(FRISK barks out a single laugh here but then returns to looking stone-faced immediately.)

CHARA: Uh-huh.


End file.
